Re-shooting the Wine Bottle

After the disaster of shooting the wine bottle on film, I re-shot on digital at home with my home studio. Still not completely happy but it is a lot better.

Product Shots

Fiona and I decided to try out a little bit of product photography in the studio. Not having anything really to hand, we went with my watch. Using the portable lights and the media studio we set up our lights, used a Nikon D800 with 105mm macro lens. The macro enabled us to get really close to the subject. We set the camera to f22 for maximum sharpness and metered the lights. Using two lights with shoot through brollies we also surrounded the watch with white reflective boards. 

I opened the image in Photoshop and started a few little changes. Firstly I adjusted the levels on the whole image and then selected just the face and did the same. I also did not like the angle of image so I then rotated it and used the distort tool to give a better over all image.

As the watch was not new and was a little grimmy (as watches get), I did a black and white conversion and slightly adjusted the brightness slider. Over all I am quite pleased with the result.

Shooting Colour Film

Shooting for the first time on colour film I was using Agfa Vista 200. First of all I shot a few sky scenes for later use when we are going to be learning how to insert a sky into a different image. I then wanted to do some light trails. I have never shot light trails before, not even on digital so I decided to bracket a few images to see how they turned out. The metering was coming out at around 15 secs so I shot at 15. 20, 30 and 10 secs. looking at the contact sheet below, there was not a huge difference at those exposure times anyway. 

The next thing I wanted to do was try my hand at product photography. I took a wine bottle and a glass into the studio and had a go.

 Above is the contact sheet that I produced from the reel.

I decided to print out the light trails first. This was the first one and was exposed for three seconds. It came out rather bright and flat. The image below was exposed for eight seconds and I feel is too dark so I then did another for six seconds. Once again I think it is too dark so probably five seconds would be better.

The product shots were another story all together. I wanted to emulate the shot on the right. A good example of rim lighting, which I came across while researching studio techniques. I set the camera up at f8 and 1/125. Using three lights I set the one to the left metered at f8, the one to the right and front at f5.6. From the result though I can see I made the fatal flaw of not ensuring all the lights fired. 

Photograms

The latest technique learnt in college. Photograms are essentially photo paper that has been exposed but with objects placed over it to stop some of the light exposing the paper. It works best with translucent objects; feathers, plastic, flowers, lace etc. Anything that allows a certain amount of light through. Anything that is solid word basically leave a completely white area on the paper.

The photograms I produced here where done in the darkroom. The objects were placed on a 8x10 size sheet of glass. The photo paper was place below and exposed to light for three seconds. Settings on the enlarger where, magenta 45, yellow 15 and cyan 0. The first exposure was over exposed and had too much red in the image. I adjusted by stopping down the lens by 3 stops and increased magenta by a further 20.

Not exactly my cup of tea but at least it was fun being in the darkroom for once, normally don't like it in there.

Fletchers' Brief

Fletchers Solicitors have supplied us with a brief to re-vamp the art work in the office. Leaving the idea generation quite open, it has been down to us to come up with some ideas on what to do so thought I would share my initial thoughts. These are a few images I have seen that I liked, based on the only thought they had, which was pop art.

Philippe Halsman

Jerry Uelsman

Roy Lichtenstein

Richard Hamilton

David Hockney

David Hockney

David Hockney

From our first meeting with Fletchers they stated one of their main aims was to modernise the way law and lawyers operate. To portray a new way of working and thinking. They wanted to dispel the impression that the law is old, stale and fusty. The work place being a prime example of this being open plan, bright and welcoming for employees and clients alike.

I wanted to show this in the court as well. Casting away the old and in with the new. I liked the work on the previous page of Jerry Uelsman and Philippe Halsman. I think combining the two styles can show the court being swept through with the winds of change. My plan therefore would be to do the image above. Inserted however, would be Lawyers, judge, clerks, books etc. All would be dressed and appear as old fashion and all being sucked into the sky.